Mad Max

I wrote this poem after a training spell at an end-of-the-road psychiatric hospital; it was an interesting experience.

Max had been there for years. On the way home from his bucks’ night, his motorbike hit a low-loader at speed and he lost one foot, the sight in one eye and enough of his brain to place him in care for the rest of his life. He lost his future bride and his friends. He was in his 50s when I met him. Max proposed to the nurses several times a day; most of us were alright with that. Max sometimes knew how sad his life was and at those times he would cry; then he’d touch his tears and look at them, wondering what they were. One particular song triggered this reaction more than anything else – Elvis Presley’s ‘Edge of Reality’.